Tag: college

  • Mapping Out the “Current Moment” in College Admissions

    Mapping Out the “Current Moment” in College Admissions

    Few people understand the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to end race-conscious admissions in higher education better than Julie Park, a University of Maryland professor who has been studying race in college enrollment and admissions since long before it became a national flashpoint.

    The case thrust her area of study into the limelight. She also served as a consulting expert on the side of Harvard University, one of two institutions—along with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—that Students for Fair Admissions sued over their race-conscious admissions policies.

    In her new book, Race, Class, and Affirmative Action (Harvard Education Press, 2026), Park explores how that seminal case has changed the admissions landscape, highlighting the ways the decision allows institutions to continue promoting racial diversity in their admissions processes. Written in early 2025, it also explores how President Trump has repeatedly wielded the SFFA decision as a tool to push forward anti-diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

    The book aims to “document the current moment” in admissions, Park writes in the introduction. She spoke with Inside Higher Ed over the phone about where things stand coming up on three years after the SFFA decision.

    The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    Q: I appreciate that at the beginning of the book, you talk about your background, as well as how you got your start researching admissions. Could you talk a little bit about why you wanted to include some of those personal details in this book?

    A: I think because the book is written purposefully in a conversational tone, and I bring some of my own story in here and there, or some of my observations, that it just made sense to talk about who I am, right? When you read a research article, you don’t always get that perspective. But I think, like it or not, we all have world views or life experiences that have shaped how we might think about something like college admissions. So, I wanted to be upfront with some of my own experiences and background for readers. And also, I think, given that Asian Americans have been such a central part of the Harvard case, I wanted to explain that I myself am Korean American, Asian American. I grew up in this type of immigrant community that talked a lot about colleges. But, then at the same time, I have other experiences that have shaped me, as well.

    Q: From the very beginning of the book, you talk quite a bit about people’s perceptions of admissions and some of the myths that exist. Why do you think that college admissions are prone to mythologizing and misinformation?

    A: I wrestled with it a lot in my last book [Race on Campus: Debunking Myths with Data [Harvard Education Press, 2018]. Like it or not, I think some of these entrenched perceptions are here to stay, but I keep trying to correct the record, and I think others do as well. I think sometimes it comes just from maybe misunderstanding, right? We know that we live in this TL,DR [too long, didn’t read] society. People aren’t always interested in the nuance. And so, something like race-conscious admissions, which is complex, even for people working in higher ed—they don’t always understand that the process is so nuanced, right? So, people will say things like, ‘oh, it’s involving quotas’ or ‘oh, students are only getting in because of race.’ And we know that’s not true from the research.

    With young people, I think why they are vulnerable to some of these characterizations of race-conscious admissions is, when you’re applying to college, and if you’re 17 or 16, you kind of only know your own world. You know your own world the best. And so, sometimes within peer networks, the way people talk about college admissions can be really simplified. We hear people talk about, “oh, so-and-so got in, and they’re of this race, but so-and-so didn’t get in and they had higher SAT scores.” That becomes this urban legend, and that just kind of passes on, unfortunately, and reflects some of the popular discourse.

    Q: You spend some time in the book talking about the flaws in admissions that already existed pre-SFFA. What are some ways that privilege and bias manifests in the admission system that people might not be aware of?

    A: Oh, so many ways. People who are immersed in the admissions world might know this, but I think the general public is less aware of how things like college visits work, and who gets visited, who doesn’t get visited. I think the public have a sense of, “OK, private school kids are going to have a certain amount of privilege.” But it’s really layers upon layers; it’s not just one singular thing. If you connect the dots, and I talk about this somewhat in the book, you have this kind of pipeline where you have people who work in admissions offices, and then they go work at private schools. Like, do you think people just suddenly stop knowing each other? Of course not. Those are networks, for better or for worse.

    And then, athletic recruitment. I wrestled with this once with a journal article reviewer, because they said, “Well, isn’t athletics more diverse?” But I thought it was really fascinating—I think this made it into the end notes, it didn’t go into the actual text. Because they were arguing, “Oh, athletics is dominated by these more diverse sports,” like basketball, football—which is true. Football does tend to have more racial, ethnic diversity. So, I actually took the time and I looked at the rosters of different big athletic schools, like University of Michigan, Alabama, etc. And then I looked at the athletic rosters at small liberal arts colleges, as well. And even I was surprised by the lack of diversity overall. Football is what takes up our minds, and football does take up a certain amount of sports, but there are so many other teams—swimming, golf, lacrosse, etc. They just add up. So, the cumulative total athletics ends up being pretty white.

    Q: What are solutions for some of these things? Is there any way for colleges to separate out the people who are more on the “pay-to-play side,” versus people who have a passion and have succeeded in, say, an extracurricular despite their circumstances?

    A: It’s really hard to say. Being a parent now, I’m very aware that everything is paid; even to be kind of mediocre is kind of expensive. My older kid, bless his heart, we are not doing piano to become a piano star. And I, too, took piano lessons, and I was terrible, right? And I took them until I was, I don’t know, 13. I was never very good, and it cost a lot of money. But it was sort of just this developmental thing, and I still am, in a weird way, glad I did it, because I can read music.

    I just saw Alysa Liu, the figure skater—her dad said it cost about a million to have her career. So, to be really good, it costs so much money.

    So how would colleges cut through that? I think it’s really difficult. In terms of more systemic reforms, thinking of the measure that certain liberal arts colleges did take to reduce the number of spots in the incoming class that were allocated basically to athletic recruitment—could they do it again? Could they reduce those numbers even more? This is [Division III]. These kids aren’t getting scholarships or anything like that. It’s like, what if you just filled those teams with the students who were able to get admitted, anyway. I understand that these institutions are just really wedded to the status quo in certain respects, which is why you still see legacy, right?

    I do think [about] how to parse out the authentic student—I don’t know. And I raised this issue at the beginning and the end of the book: [There is] another big concern of what admissions has become in terms of performativity. It’s demanding on young people and just that stress and pressure to package yourself. I don’t think it’s healthy. I think it’d be a brave college to really reverse course.

    Q: In this book, in the context of both admissions and the Trump administration’s broad reading of SFFA, that they’ve applied to non–admissions-related things, you really call on colleges to take a bold stand. But I obviously think a lot of colleges would say, we can’t be singled out right now. Can you talk more about what you think colleges should be doing in this moment?

    A: After the decision in SFFA rolled out in 2023, college presidents were very public about condemning the decision, saying, “This is a terrible decision. We still value diversity. We value racial diversity.” They were very specific. How quickly things can change, right? I think it’s leadership, it’s the choice that people make. We just had this news [last week] that the Trump administration’s anti-DEI mandates, which were shut down in court—the Trump administration isn’t going to challenge that. But it’s just this roundabout—they got what they wanted, right? They got the compliance. They got preemptive, really preemptive compliance. And it’s really tricky. I mean, I’m not a college president, I’m not a general counsel, so I know I had the luxury of saying, “Stay true to yourself, everyone!” but I think these difficult times call for leadership.

    Of course, I would like them to stand up for racial and ethnic diversity, and I think they should. Right now, institutions probably feel safer talking about economic diversity. If that’s the way to at least keep diversity in the conversation, then that might be part of things as well. The Trump administration has shown itself hostile even to certain efforts to advance economic diversity. That’s the area where we have a much larger legal bandwidth, to pursue economic diversity intentionally.

    Q: The Trump administration has used the term “racial proxy” to describe some recruiting strategies, like geographic recruiting. What are your thoughts on how colleges should respond to that?

    A: The stuff from the Trump administration, it’s important to read carefully. They’re saying, “[You can’t use] this as a proxy for race,” and then the colleges can just say, “We’re not using it as a proxy for race,” and they have a whole track record of saying, “We value geographic diversity; we value economic diversity.” And, honestly, economic diversity isn’t a great proxy for race. If they’re trying to use that as a proxy, they’re failing, because we are seeing these major regressions, especially in Black enrollment.

    There’s a lot of bluster, and I know that sometimes institutions feel like they’re having to thread the needle or kind of maneuver things, but I don’t think they should back away from these efforts, because they’re greatly needed.

    Q: On the other side of the coin, you talk about things that made you hopeful in research for this book. Can you tell me about some of those things?

    A: It’s been such a demoralizing year. I think it is a hopeful book, or at least—I’m amazed that I closed it out and I said, “I did the deep dive into the research, and when I looked at what things actually said, I have hope.” Now, I recognize, in this current era, it’s just not about what’s legal or not legal; it’s about what this administration wants. Let’s hope—let’s collectively hope—that it won’t always be this way, and look at the options that still exist, both in the law and what institutions can do.

    I talk about the Croson case, which is a little-known Supreme Court case from 1989. There is some legal precedent that says, “Hey, [institutions] actually could defend their efforts to expand access by saying that they have these programs either due to addressing specific past discrimination by that institution or entity, or through passive participation in some sort of industry that resulted in racial inequality.” Well, guess what? Everyone possibly participated in [such an] industry; the standardized testing industry, that’s a huge one, right?

    I know it doesn’t feel politically feasible in the current era, but I think [continuing to use race in a limited way] is something that institutions should not dismiss. So that is something that gave me hope, just to see that that the door is not totally shut.

    And I think reading the actual [SFFA] ruling, while it is not ideal, to recognize that it could have been worse. I think that the court tried to be as specific as possible in affirming that race still matters to individuals’ experiences, that institutions can still consider how students talk about race and the relevance of race to their lives and traits valued by institutions.

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  • ED Scraps Biden-Era Regulation for Corporate College Owners

    ED Scraps Biden-Era Regulation for Corporate College Owners

    Student advocates say the department’s decision could allow for fraud at the cost of taxpayers.

    Greggory DiSalvo/iStock/Getty Images Plus

    The Trump administration will no longer automatically enforce an accountability measure for the owners of private institutions that consumer advocacy groups say is critical to protecting students and taxpayers.

    The regulation was originally put in place by the Biden administration, first as guidance and then in regulations. Under the policy, primary owners of for-profit and nonprofit colleges were required to sign onto a contract, known as a Program Participation Agreement, in order for their institution to access federal student aid. The aim of requiring the individual or corporation who owns an institution to sign onto the PPA signature requirement was to hold them accountable for unpaid debts, misuse of federal funding and compliance with federal aid law.(PPAs still have be signed by the president or CEO of the institution.)

    But now, according to a Jan. 16 announcement, the owners will not always have to assume personal liability after ED voluntarily settled with a Missouri Christian college that challenged the requirement. The education secretary does, however, reserve the right to require signatures on a case-by-case basis if necessary to “protect the financial interest of the United States.”

    Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent said the change will maintain liability standards as much as possible while abiding by the law, which limits the department’s authority to force owners to assume personal liability to circumstances when “institutions have financial problems.” The department intends to further clarify how it will conduct case-by-case evaluations through a rule-making session but did not clarify when that session will be held.

    “The Biden Administration’s regulation was over broad as it required all private institutional owners, including at faith-based colleges, to sign program participation agreements,” Kent said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed. “Moving forward, the Trump Administration will adhere to the law … This approach will protect taxpayers while not creating undue burden on institutions.”

    Student and taxpayer advocates, however, view the decision as a major mistake—particularly because it extends beyond nonprofit religious institutions like the one behind the lawsuit, granting more flexibility to for-profit institutions as well.

    “Taking the blanket signature requirement away does nothing to protect students. It does nothing to protect the taxpayer interest. Really, the only people with benefits are those who could be held financially responsible,” said Dan Zibel, vice president and chief counsel of Student Defense, a legal advocacy group.

    He cited news coverage and research reports as evidence that the owners of some for-profit institutions can access federal aid and take advantage of students. But when those owners were forced to sign a PPA contract, they could be less freely inclined to defraud students, he explained.

    It forced them to “acknowledge their own skin in the game,” Zibel said. So by halting the enforcement of these contracts, particularly for for-profit owners, the department “is sorely misguided and makes it harder, not easier, for the department to protect students and taxpayers.”

    Hannibal-LaGrange University and its sponsor, the Missouri Baptist Convention, argued in the lawsuit that the department’s requirement exceeded the agency’s statutory authority and violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Other private institutions and their lobbyists have also pushed back, saying many of LaGrange’s arguments extend to nonreligious institutions and corporate owners.

    Jordan Wicker, Career Education Colleges and Universities’ senior vice president of legislative and regulatory affairs, called the change “a meaningful course correction” for “unintended consequences” and institutional burdens created by the regulation.

    “The 2023 rule … made the risk to institutions significantly greater when it comes to routine recertifications, acquisitions, ownership changes, any corporate restructuring or even simple business financial transactions,” Wicker said. “Particularly for proprietary institutions, you’re looking at a dampening effect of the market, or the devaluation of schools because of hesitancy for new capital to enter that space.”

    “[Signing on for liability] is an extraordinary risk in the world of business and operations, and so it created a hesitancy,” he added.

    Lawyers at Duane Morris LLP, a law firm that represents public, private, nonprofit and proprietary colleges, said the decision was “significant for institutions and their owners, sponsors, investors and lenders because it responds to significant adverse effects” of the rule.

    In a breakdown of the announcement, the firm noted that while ED is now requiring officials to sign the agreements only when necessary, the department only has the authority, in their view, to allow individual owners to take on liability—not full corporate entities.

    As a result, “the market effects will likely persist to some extent unless the issue is fully resolved through final, legally sustainable regulatory action,” the firm stated.

    But Zibel argued that the fact businesses are wary of taking on liability shows why this regulation is necessary and conforms with the law.

    “For-profit companies have been able to make sizable profits and scam students, which has cost the federal government and cost taxpayers billions of dollars, with no one at the end of the day held financially accountable for this,” he said. “The federal government should be doing everything in their power to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

    Zibel also believes that the way in which the department terminated enforcement of this policy is illegal. Federal law requires the department to go through a specific process, known as negotiated rule making, to both create and repeal regulations. That process includes opportunity for public comment as well as a discussion between representatives of multiple constituent groups and the department. None of those steps were followed in this case.

    “Doing things by settlement is not how this is supposed to happen,” he said.

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  • ‘The pace is relentless’: How college leaders are adapting to an increasingly hectic job

    ‘The pace is relentless’: How college leaders are adapting to an increasingly hectic job

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    WASHINGTON — Leading a higher education institution is often associated with big picture ideas and high-level thinking. But jobs ranging from dean to president require hands-on management of a complex portfolio of tasks, and that portfolio has only grown in recent years.

    “Leadership right now is not just demanding. It is cognitively and emotionally dense,” Francine Conway, chancellor of Rutgers University–New Brunswick, said Thursday at the American Association of Colleges and Universities′ annual conference in Washington, D.C. “The pace is relentless.”

    During a standing-room-only panel, Conway and other senior college officials offered attendees practical solutions to solving some of the most prosaic day-to-day challenges that can slow leaders — and their institutions — down.

    ‘You will drive everyone good at their jobs away by micromanaging’

    In most cases, one of the key benefits of a leadership position is having a support team. Conway said she actively seeks to empower her office mates to take on decision-making responsibilities, in part to keep her work high level.

    “I say to my team, ‘If you can make a decision that does not substantively change the institution or alter our mission, you can go ahead and make that decision,’” she said.

    But for some leaders, it can be hard to delegate appropriately, said Jennifer Malat, dean of the University of New Mexico’s arts and sciences college.

    “A lot of us get into leadership roles because we were super overachievers who have a mindset that we must do everything ourselves,” Malat said. But you can’t succeed as a leader that way, both because there physically aren’t enough hours in the day and because “you will drive everyone good at their jobs away by micromanaging,” she added. 

    Mardell Wilson, provost at Creighton University, a private nonprofit in Nebraska, echoed that sentiment. 

    “You really aren’t as important as you think,” she laughed. While it’s easier to be confident in one’s own work, “you have to give someone else an opportunity.”

    For Carmenita Higginbotham, delegating is especially essential. She helps lead two dramatically different Virginia Commonwealth University campuses in her roles as dean of the public institution’s main art school and as the special assistant to the provost for its arts school in Qatar.

    “I don’t delegate tasks, I delegate outcomes and give them the bigger picture,” Higginbotham said, listing increases in student retention and post-graduate employment as examples.

    Once leaders establish which outcomes are important, she advises them to let their teams work on them without seeking constant updates. 

    Instead, they should emphasize they are available for questions or broader conversations about the project, she said. 

    “Sometimes, if people are trying to impress you, they won’t come to you,” Higginbotham said, adding that’s an instinct she fights as well. Encouraging openness from team members can avoid issues down the line, she added. 

    Avoiding a Tetris calendar

    College leaders are constantly fighting the most universal of constraints — time. While a full calendar can signal progress to some, panelists told attendees that the cognitive load of constant meetings often results in the sense that their job is getting in the way of their work.

    Leadership right now is not just demanding. It is cognitively and emotionally dense.

    Francine Conway

    Chancellor of Rutgers University–New Brunswick

    The wide-ranging responsibilities of college leaders can also result in rapid tonal shifts throughout the day. Conway gave the example of conducting standard employee check-ins after handling a missing student case. 

    To address the high potential for emotional whiplash, she creates 15-minute buffers between meetings on her calendar. And Conway said she is OK rescheduling meetings on days when she “needs more time to think and process” in order “to show up more fully.”

    “If you don’t design your time, it will be designed for you,” she said. 

    That operating procedure runs counter to the stereotypical calendar of some college leaders, with back-to-back hourlong meetings.

    “Not every meeting has to be an hour,” Conway said. “Or even 30 minutes.”

    When Wilson first joined Creighton in 2020, employees constantly had scheduled meetings, she said.

    Now, her office goes nearly meeting free in July, and she encourages her employees to do the same with their reports.

    Academic offices are usually in a scheduling frenzy at the height of summer, with people taking vacations or attending higher ed conferences out of town, Wilson said. Making July a low-touch month allows leaders to reset for the coming academic year and reduces burnout.

    “But it’s not just rest for you. You’re role modeling for your team, which is also really important,” she said.

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  • Measuring student global competency learning using direct peer connections

    Measuring student global competency learning using direct peer connections

    Key points:

    Our students are coming of age in a world that demands global competency. From economic interdependence to the accelerating effects of climate change and mass migration, students need to develop the knowledge and skills to engage and succeed in this diverse and interconnected world. Consequently, the need for global competency education is more important than ever.

    “Being born into a global world does not make people global citizens,” Andreas Schleicher of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has said. “We must deliberately and systematically educate our children in global competence.” 

    Here at Global Cities, we regularly talk with educators eager to bring global competency into their classrooms in ways that engage and excite students to learn. Educators recognize the need, but ask a vital question: How do we teach something we can’t measure?

    It’s clear that in today’s competitive and data-driven education environment, we need to expand and evaluate what students need to know to be globally competent adults. Global competency education requires evaluation tools to determine what and whether students are learning.

    The good news is that two recent independent research studies found that educators can use a new tool, the Global Cities’ Codebook for Global Student Learning Outcomes, to identify what global competency learning looks like and to assess whether students are learning by examining student writing. The research successfully used the evaluation tool for global competency programs with different models and curricula and across different student populations.

    Global Cities developed the Codebook to help researchers, program designers, and educators identify, teach, and measure global competency in their own classrooms. Created in partnership with Harvard Graduate School of Education’s The Open Canopy, the Codebook captures 55 observable indicators across four core global learning outcomes: Appreciation for Diversity, Cultural Understanding, Global Knowledge, and Global Engagement. The Codebook was developed using data from our own Global Scholars virtual exchange program, which since 2014 has connected more than 139,000 students in 126 cities worldwide to teach global competency.

    In Global Scholars, we’ve seen firsthand the excitement of directly connecting students with their international peers and sparking meaningful discussions about culture, community, and shared challenges. We know how teachers can effectively use the Codebook and how Global Cities workshops extend the reach of this approach to a larger audience of K-12 teachers. This research was designed to determine whether the same tool could be used to assess global competency learning in other virtual exchange programs, not only Global Cities’ Global Scholars program.

    These studies make clear that the Codebook can reliably identify global learning in diverse contexts and help educators see where and how their students are developing global competency skills in virtual exchange curricula. You can examine the tool (the Codebook) here. You can explore the full research findings here.

    The first study looked at two AFS Intercultural Programs curricula, Global You Changemaker and Global Up Teen. The second study analyzed student work from The Open Canopy‘s Planetary Health and Remembering the Past learning journeys.

    In the AFS Intercultural Programs data, researchers found clear examples of students from across the globe showing Appreciation for Diversity and Cultural Understanding. In these AFS online discussion boards, students showed evidence they were learning about their own and other cultures, expressed positive attitudes about one another’s cultures, and demonstrated tolerance for different backgrounds and points of view. Additionally, the discussion boards offered opportunities for students to interact with each other virtually, and there were many examples of students from different parts of the world listening to one another and interacting in positive and respectful ways. When the curriculum invited students to design projects addressing community or global issues, they demonstrated strong evidence of Global Engagement as well.

    Students in The Open Canopy program demonstrated the three most prevalent indicators of global learning that reflect core skills essential to effective virtual exchange: listening to others and discussing issues in a respectful and unbiased way; interacting with people of different backgrounds positively and respectfully; and using digital tools to learn from and communicate with peers around the world. Many of the Remembering the Past posts were especially rich and coded for multiple indicators of global learning.

    Together, these studies show that global competency can be taught–and measured. They also highlight simple, but powerful strategies educators everywhere can use:

    • Structured opportunities for exchange help students listen and interact respectfully with one another
    • Virtual exchange prompts students to share their cultures and experiences across lines of difference in positive, curious ways
    • Assignments that include reflection questions–why something matters, not just what it is–help students think critically about culture and global issues
    • Opportunities for students to give their opinion and to decide to take action, even hypothetically, builds their sense of agency in addressing global challenges

    The Codebook is available free to all educators, along with hands-on professional development workshops that guide teachers in using the tool to design curriculum, teach intentionally, and assess learning. Its comprehensive set of indicators gives educators and curriculum designers a menu of options–some they might not have initially considered–that can enrich students’ global learning experiences.

    Our message to educators is simple: A community of educators (Global Ed Lab), a research-supported framework, and practical tools can help you teach students global competency and evaluate their work.

    The question is no longer whether we need more global competency education. We clearly do. Now with the Codebook and the Global Ed Lab, teachers can learn how to teach this subject matter effectively and use tools to assess student learning.

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  • In rapid about-face, Morris Brown College brings back president it fired

    In rapid about-face, Morris Brown College brings back president it fired

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    Dive Brief:

    • Morris Brown College has reinstated its president of seven years just days after abruptly terminating him on Jan. 12.
    • The historically Black college said President Kevin James agreed on Jan. 16 to accept the Atlanta institution’s invitation to return to the leadership post. 
    • “After careful review, the Board determined that Dr. James’ separation from the College did not fully comply with the procedural and contractual requirements outlined in his employment agreement,” the college’s board of trustees said Tuesday.

    Dive Insight:

    Morris Brown’s board acknowledged the potential emotional whiplash its actions and reversal might cause among stakeholders. 

    “This period has been disruptive and painful for members of the Morris Brown community,” the board said in its announcement. “The board deeply regrets the harm this has caused our institution, students, families, donors, supporters, and Dr. James.”

    On Tuesday, after Morris Brown announced James’ return, local station WSB-TV 2 reported that it had obtained “multiple documents with allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and threats by James.”

    Included in the materials WSB-TV 2 said it obtained are grievances filed by college employees who accused James of intimidation and misusing his authority, retaliation, and creating a hostile work environment. Those internal complaints led the college to suspend James prior to firing him. 

    A spokesperson for the college did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

    In a statement posted to social media on Jan. 12, James said the college terminated him “without providing specific cause or substantive explanation.”

    “This action is deeply concerning,” James said at the time. “Research and my lived experience demonstrate that many HBCUs have struggled with board overreach and interference. Unfortunately, those dynamics are evident in this situation.”

    Morris Brown had announced on Jan. 12 that a trustee, Nzinga Shaw, would take over as interim president. In a statement shared with the media then, the college said, “This transition in leadership will help to ensure continuity as we move forward with the important work of strengthening and advancing the College.” 

    The statement has since been replaced on Morris Brown’s website with news of James’ reinstatement.  

    In the new announcement, the college’s board said that it “takes seriously the concerns voiced by members of our community and affirms that retaliation against individuals who raise concerns in good faith is not acceptable.” However, it didn’t elaborate on those concerns. 

    The board added that it is committed to “ensuring that appropriate processes exist for concerns to be raised safely, reviewed fairly, and addressed responsibly.”

    James also issued a statement on Tuesday about his return. In it, he said his top priorities are to “begin the healing journey while continuing our focused preparation for our upcoming accreditation reaffirmation visit in two weeks.”

    Morris Brown in 2022 became fully accredited with the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools after a two-decade effort.

    The college lost its accreditation in the early 2000s over financial issues, which then led to precipitous enrollment declines and even deeper challenges. In 2012, the institution filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

    In recent years, Morris Brown has posted healthy operating surpluses. However, its most recent financial statements include findings from auditors of some deficient financial controls and accounting processes. 

    The college, founded in 1881 by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, enrolled 432 students in fall 2024. That’s up more than 70% from 2022 levels but still much smaller than in 2002, when the college had some 2,500 students.

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  • Federal policy uncertainty is disrupting planning, college leaders say

    Federal policy uncertainty is disrupting planning, college leaders say

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    Dive Brief:

    • Nearly all senior higher education leaders — 98% — reported that federal policymaking has introduced uncertainty into institutional planning, according to the latest pulse survey from the American Council on Education. 
    • Topping the list of senior leaders’ most pressing concerns is state and federal interference with colleges’ autonomy. Over 70% of leaders said they were either extremely or moderately concerned about threats to independence and academic freedom.
    • “Uncertainty around research funding, immigration and international engagement, academic freedom, and student aid policy are shaping institutional decision-making and straining long-term planning efforts,” the report’s authors wrote.

    Dive Insight:

    After 2025’s many policy upheavals, it would be shocking only if college leaders didn’t report some uncertainty. 

    Last year, President Donald Trump and his administration upended many of the sector’s longstanding precedents and fundamental assumptions. Trump’s executive branch attacked everything from the U.S. Department of Education as a whole, to research funding, to the visa system for international students, to individual colleges, many of which became targets of civil rights investigations and political pressure campaigns.

    Trump and congressional Republicans also ended the 20-year-old Grad PLUS loan program and introduced new caps on federal student loans that some worry will limit students’ access to graduate education. 

    All of that tumult is clearly weighing on the minds of college leaders. 

    Nearly three in four senior leaders described their level of uncertainty about the federal policy environment and its impact on planning as “extreme” or “moderate,” according to the poll. Another 19% reported “some” uncertainty and 7% described it as “slight.” 

    Trump’s impact on international student enrollment — with recent studies showing dips in graduate and new students from abroad — also loomed large for many leaders. Sixty percent said they were extremely or moderately concerned about immigration restrictions and visa revocations.

    Academic freedom and institutional autonomy are also arguably more at risk than they have been in generations.

    Trump’s government has tried to force policy changes at colleges through federal investigations, research funding cuts and his compact for higher education. In some cases, the administration has wrested payments and policy changes from institutions under pressure. 

    But many colleges and universities are also losing their independence through new state laws that aim to weaken governance, direct course content, and banish diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. 

    In a recent report, the free expression group PEN America described 2025 as a “catastrophe” for higher ed. The group counted 21 bills across 15 states enacted in 2025 that it says censor higher education and were the “result of a relentless, years-old campaign to exert ideological control over college and university campuses.” 

    College leaders also flagged perennial challenges among their concerns in the ACE poll. That includes fiscal pressures, with 44% reporting either extreme or moderate concern about long-term financial viability. Enrollment, the mental health of students and perceptions about higher education’s value were all among leaders’ most pressing concerns as well. Over 75% reported extreme or moderate concern around what the public and policymakers thought about the sector. 

    The ACE report drew from a December survey of 386 senior leaders from colleges nationwide.

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  • As men stop going to college, women have now overtaken them in graduate and professional degrees

    As men stop going to college, women have now overtaken them in graduate and professional degrees

    by Jon Marcus, The Hechinger Report
    January 20, 2026

    WATERTOWN, Mass. — Amanda Leef remembers thinking for the first time about becoming a veterinarian when she was 4 and found a garter snake in her Michigan backyard.

    “I think every girl goes through a phase of wanting to be a vet,” Leef said.

    For her, it wasn’t just a phase. Now, at 48, she co-owns her own bustling veterinary practice, Heal Veterinary Clinic, in this Boston suburb. 

    All seven veterinarians here are women. So is the large team of vet techs, and the entire rest of the 22-member medical staff.

    “In really broad generalities, I think women are more interested in the emotional and empathetic side of things than men are,” Leef said, sitting on the floor of an examination room with one of her patients, an affectionate, white-furred golden retriever named Cypress.

    For that and other reasons, women studying veterinary medicine now outnumber men by four to one. 

    It’s not just veterinary school. The number of women has surpassed the number of men in law school, medical school, pharmacy school, optometry school and dental school.

    Women in the United States now earn 40 percent more doctoral degrees overall, and nearly twice as many master’s degrees, as men, according to the U.S. Department of Education — a trend transforming high-end work. 

    This is no longer some distant statistical abstraction. Americans can see it when they take their pets to the vet or their kids to the dentist, need a lawyer or an eye exam, see a therapist or pick up a prescription.

    The dramatic shift in who is being trained for these fields is partly because more women are going into them. But it’s also the result of a steady slide in the number of men enrolling in graduate and professional schools. And while that may be elevating women, it’s affecting the nation’s economic competitiveness and even the point at which people get married and have children.

    “Having all students represented and engaged in graduate study ensures that we have healthy communities and families and a vital economy,” said Chevelle Newsome, president of the Council of Graduate Schools.

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    Graduate schools — including the 460 Newsome represents — have their own motive for wanting more men to enroll. They’re facing new threats from declining international enrollment, impending federal borrowing limits for graduate study and a public backlash against the high cost and uneven returns of graduate degrees.

    The main reason women have overtaken men in graduate school, however, is that more women than men are earning the undergraduate degrees required to go on to advanced study. 

    “Women certainly still see education in terms of upward mobility,” said Lisa Greenhill, chief organizational health officer at the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges, whose job includes trying to diversify veterinary medicine. “Men have a lot more options. They feel like they don’t have to go to a four-year program or a graduate program.”

    The number of men enrolled as undergraduates in college nationwide has dropped by nearly a quarter of a million, or 4 percent, just since 2020, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reports. 

    Women now account for about 60 percent of undergraduate enrollment. Nearly half of women aged 25 to 34 have bachelor’s degrees, compared to 37 percent of men, according to the Pew Research Center.

    “Men aren’t seeing higher education as valuable,” said Newsome. Many go into the trades or take other jobs straight out of high school to begin immediately earning a wage, forgoing the need to spend time in or money on college. Even men who do get undergraduate degrees may not see the value in continuing beyond them, she said.

    The effects of this have been stark and swift.

    The number of women earning law degrees passed the number of men in 2019, figures from the American Bar Association, or ABA, show; while only four of the law schools ranked among the 20 most prestigious by U.S. News & World Report had more women than men in 2016, women now outnumber men at 18 of them, according to the nonprofit law student news site JURIST. 

    Related: Trump’s attacks on DEI may hurt men in college admission

    That’s already having a real-world impact. By 2020, the ABA says, the majority of general lawyers working for the federal government were women, and by 2023, the majority of associates at law firms were.

    In medical schools, the number of women also overtook the number of men in 2019. Today, 55 percent of future doctors are women, up from 48 percent in 2015, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, or AAMC.

    Women already make up significantly larger proportions of residents in specialties including endocrinology, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, family medicine and psychiatry.

    Women also outnumber men by three to one in doctoral programs in psychology, and by nearly four to one in master’s programs, the American Psychological Association reports. They make up 55 percent of graduates of dental schools, and 72 percent in pediatric dentistry, according to the American Dental Association. 

    More than seven out of 10 students in schools of optometry are women, the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry says. And at pharmacy schools, women constitute two-thirds of students working toward master’s degrees and 56 percent of those seeking doctorates, statistics from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy show.

    There are still more men than women in doctoral and master’s degree programs in business, engineering, math and the physical sciences. But women make up substantial majorities of graduate enrollment in health sciences, public administration, education, social and behavioral sciences and biological and agricultural sciences, according to the Council of Graduate Schools.

    While this represents impressive progress for women, the declining number of men enrolling in graduate programs is bad news for universities and colleges that offer them, for some patients in the health care system and for the economy.

    That’s because the growing number of women going to graduate and professional schools can’t continue forever to outpace the decline in the number of men. Total graduate enrollment at private, nonprofit colleges and universities was already down this fall, the Clearinghouse reports. 

    Related: Football fantasy: Colleges add sports to bring men, but it doesn’t always work

    That’s a problem made worse by visa restrictions and cuts to federal research funding, which have helped reduce the number of international students coming to the United States for graduate study by 12 percent, according to the Institute of International Education. 

    New federal loan limits scheduled to take effect next year are widely expected to further eat into graduate school enrollment. The changes will cap borrowing at $100,000 for graduate students and $200,000 for those in professional programs. That’s much less than the $408,150 the AAMC says it costs to get a medical degree from a private, nonprofit university or the $297,745 from a public one. The association of medical colleges projects a national shortage of as many as 124,000 physicians by 2034.

    The price of getting a graduate degree has more than tripled since 2000, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Graduate degrees have become a critical revenue source for universities, which take in about $20 billion a year from master’s programs alone, a separate analysis, by the right-leaning think tank the American Enterprise Institute, calculates.

    Students of all genders are increasingly questioning the return on that investment. Nearly 40 percent of prospective graduate students say graduate programs that cost more than $10,000 a year are too expensive, a new survey by the enrollment management consulting firm EAB finds. Payoffs vary widely, making some graduate degrees “a potentially high-risk investment,” the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce has concluded. 

    The proportion of Americans 25 and older with master’s degrees or higher has fallen since 2000, from first in the world to 24th, according to the World Bank, while the percentage of those with doctoral degrees has dropped during that period from first to seventh.

    “That is a huge concern, when you think about where economies are going,” said Claudia Buchmann, an Ohio State University sociologist who studies this issue and is coauthor of the book “The Rise of Women.” “If we’re trying to compete on a global level, the fact that men’s college-going rates are so stagnant means we can’t fix this problem until we get more men.”

    Related: Even as women outpace men in graduating from college, their earnings remain stuck

    Men are, after all, half the nation’s labor force. And while some graduate degrees may not pay off, many of them do, substantially. People with advanced degrees are also much less likely to be unemployed.

    “When you think about global economic competitiveness for the United States — despite the skepticism that’s out there — education and training are still the keys to good jobs,” Buchmann said. Falling behind by that measure “is doing damage to men in this country.”

    But experts worry that the gender shift is self-perpetuating. Men may be put off by what they see as the “feminization” of professions in which they now are the minority, research by the veterinary medical colleges association concluded. 

    “I’m not seeing a national effort to say we need to change this,” Buchmann said. “If anything, the opposite is true.” 

    Graduate school leaders say the most effective efforts at reversing this trend are at the undergraduate level. “A lot of the effort from the graduate community has been to reach down and support those projects,” said Newsome, who was formerly dean of graduate studies at California State University, Sacramento. Universities also are encouraging employers to sponsor graduate education for male employees, she said.

    The effects of this widening gender divide are not just economic. New studies show that growing gender disparities in education can affect relationships. Marriage rates have fallen as levels of education rise, according to research from Iowa State University; each additional year of schooling reduces by about 4 percentage points the likelihood that someone between 25 and 34 is married. The proportion of Americans in that age bracket who are married has declined from 80 percent in 1970 to 38 percent today.

    Related: Universities and colleges search for ways to reverse the decline in the ranks of male students

    “When folks are looking for partners, there’s a desire to find someone economically comparable,” said Greenhill, of the veterinary medical colleges association. Added Buchmann, at Ohio State: “A lot of masculine norms are about being the breadwinner of the family. If the woman is the principal breadwinner, that presents not just economic challenges, but challenges to make marriages work.”

    More-educated women are also more likely to delay or forgo having children, according to separate research from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

    Back at her veterinary clinic, Amanda Leef makes the rounds, checking in on a dog getting his teeth cleaned and a pair of kittens waiting to be adopted. 

    Only one male veterinarian has ever applied to work there, Leef said. He was hired, but eventually left to go into research.

    “It does change the personality of a clinic” to be made up of only women, she said. “A staff that’s diverse is more accessible to a broader range of people. I just think the world is better with greater gender diversity.”

    Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, [email protected] or jpm.82 on Signal.

    This story about higher education and men was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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  • Trump’s admissions data collection strains college administrators

    Trump’s admissions data collection strains college administrators

    by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
    January 19, 2026

    Lynette Duncan didn’t expect to spend 20 hours over the past two weeks digging through a mothballed computer system, trying to retrieve admissions data from 2019.

    Duncan is the director of institutional research at John Brown University, a small Christian university in northwest Arkansas, an hour’s drive from Walmart’s headquarters. She runs a one-person office that handles university data collections and analyses, both for internal use and to meet government mandates. Just last year, she spent months collecting and crunching new data to comply with a new federal rule requiring that colleges show that their graduates are prepared for good jobs.

    Then, in mid-December, another mandate abruptly arrived — this one at the request of President Donald Trump. Colleges were ordered to compile seven years of admissions data, broken down by race, sex, grades, SAT or ACT scores, and family income.

    “It’s like one more weight on our backs,” Duncan said. “The workload – it’s not fun.”

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    John Brown University is one of almost 2,200 colleges and universities nationwide now scrambling to comply by March 18 with the new federal reporting requirement, formally known as the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement, or ACTS. By all accounts, it’s a ton of work, and at small institutions, the task falls largely on a single administrator or even the registrar. Failure to submit the data can bring steep fines and, ultimately, the loss of access to federal aid for students.

    After the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning affirmative action in college admissions, the Trump administration suspected that colleges might covertly continue to give racial preferences. To police compliance, the White House directed the Department of Education to collect detailed admissions data from colleges nationwide.

    The data collection was unusual not only in its scope, but also in its speed. Federal education data collections typically take years to design, with multiple rounds of analysis, technical review panels, and revisions. This one moved from announcement to launch in a matter of months.

    A rush job

    One tiny indication that this was a rush job is in the Federal Register notice. Both enforce and admissions are misspelled in a proposal that’s all about admissions enforcement. Those words are spelled “admssions” and “enforece.” 

    A December filing with the Office of Management and Budget incorrectly lists the number of institutions that are subject to the new data collection. It is nearly 2,200, not 1,660, according to the Association for Institutional Research, which is advising colleges on how to properly report the data. Community colleges are exempt, but four-year institutions with selective admissions or those that give out their own financial aid must comply. Graduate programs are included as well. That adds up to about 2,200 institutions. 

    Related: Inaccurate, impossible: Experts knock new Trump plan to collect college admissions data

    In another filing with the Office of Management and Budget, the administration disclosed that none of the five remaining career Education Department officials with statistical experience had reviewed the proposal, including Matt Soldner, the acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. Most of the department’s statistical staff were fired earlier this year as a first step to eliminating the Education Department, one of Trump’s campaign promises. RTI International, the federal contractor in North Carolina that already manages other higher education data collections for the Education Department, is also handling the day-to-day work of this new college admissions collection. 

    During two public comment periods, colleges and higher-education trade groups raised concerns about data quality and missing records, but there is little evidence those concerns substantially altered the final design. One change expanded the retrospective data requirement from five to six years so that at least one cohort of students would have a measurable six-year graduation rate. A second relieved colleges of the burden of making hundreds of complex statistical calculations themselves, instead instructing them to upload raw student data to an “aggregator tool” that would do all the math for them. 

    The Trump administration’s goal is to generate comparisons across race and sex categories, with large gaps potentially triggering further scrutiny.

    Missing data

    The results are unlikely to be reliable, experts told me, given how much of the underlying data is missing or incomplete. In a public comment letter, Melanie Gottlieb, executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, warned that entire years of applicant data may not exist at many institutions. Some states advise colleges to delete records for applicants who never enrolled after a year. “If institutions are remaining compliant with their state policies, they will not have five years of data,” Gottlieb wrote.

    The organization’s own guidance recommends that four-year colleges retain admissions records for just one year after an application cycle. One reason is privacy. Applicant files contain sensitive personal information, and purging unneeded records reduces the risk of exposing this data in breaches.

    In other cases, especially at smaller institutions, admissions offices may offload applicant data simply to make room for new student records. Duncan said John Brown University has all seven years of required data, but a switch to a new computer system in 2019 has made it difficult to retrieve the first year.

    Even when historical records are available, key details may be missing or incompatible with federal requirements, said Christine Keller, executive director of the Association for Institutional Research, which previously received a federal contract to train college administrators on accurate data collection until DOGE eliminated it. (The organization now receives some private funds for a reduced amount of training.) 

    Related: Chaos and confusion as the statistics arm of the Education Department is reduced to a skeletal staff of 3

    Standardized test scores are unavailable for many students admitted under test-optional policies. The department is asking colleges to report an unweighted grade-point average on a four-point scale, even though many applicants submit only weighted GPAs on a five-point scale. In those cases, and there may be many of them, colleges are instructed to report the GPA as “unknown.”

    Some students decline to report their race. Many holes are expected for family income. Colleges generally have income data only for students who completed federal financial-aid forms, which many applicants never file. 

    Ellen Keast, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said in an email, “Schools are not expected to provide data they don’t have.” She added, “We know that some schools may have missing data for some data elements. We’ll review the extent of missing data before doing further calculations or analyses.”

    Male or female

    Even the category of sex poses problems. The Education Department’s spreadsheet allows only two options: male or female. Colleges, however, may collect sex or gender information using additional categories, such as nonbinary. 

    “That data is going to be, in my estimation, pretty worthless when it comes to really showing the different experiences of men and women,” Keller said. She is urging the department to add a “missing” option to avoid misleading results. “I think some people in the department may be misunderstanding that what’s needed is a missing-data option, not another sex category.”

    The new “aggregator tool” itself is another source of anxiety. Designed to spare colleges from calculating quintile buckets for grades and test scores by race and sex, it can feel like a black box. Colleges are supposed to fill rows and rows of detailed student data into spreadsheets and then upload the spreadsheets into the tool. The tool generates pooled summary statistics, such as the number of Black female applicants and admitted students who score in the top 20 percent at the college. Only the aggregated data will be reported to the federal government.

    At John Brown University, Duncan worries about what those summaries might imply. Her institution is predominantly white and has never practiced affirmative action. But if high school grades or test scores differ by race — as they often do nationwide — the aggregated results could suggest bias where none was intended.

    “That’s a concern,” Duncan said. “I’m hopeful that looking across multiple years of data, it won’t show that. You could have an anomaly in one year.”

    The problem is that disparities are not anomalies. Standardized test scores and academic records routinely vary by race and sex, making it difficult for almost any institution to avoid showing gaps.

    A catch-22 for colleges

    The stakes are high. In an emailed response to my questions, the Education Department pointed to Trump’s Aug. 7 memorandum, which directs the agency to take “remedial action” if colleges fail to submit the data on time or submit incomplete or inaccurate information.

    Under federal law, each violation of these education data-reporting requirements can carry a fine of up to $71,545. Repeated noncompliance can ultimately lead to the loss of access to federal student aid, meaning students could no longer use Pell Grants or federal loans to pay tuition.

    That leaves colleges in a bind. Failing to comply is costly. Complying, meanwhile, could produce flawed data that suggests bias and invites further scrutiny.

    The order itself contradicts another administration goal. President Trump campaigned on reducing federal red tape and bureaucratic burden. Yet ACTS represents a significant expansion of paperwork for colleges. The Office of Management and Budget estimates that each institution will spend roughly 200 hours completing the survey this year — a figure that higher-education officials say may be an understatement.

    Duncan is hoping she can finish the reporting in less than 200 hours, if there are no setbacks when she uploads the data. “If I get errors, it could take double the time,” she said.

    For now, she is still gathering and cleaning old student records and waiting to see the results… all before the March 18 deadline.

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about college admissions data was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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  • Hampshire College faces closure risk if it can’t refinance debt, audit says

    Hampshire College faces closure risk if it can’t refinance debt, audit says

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    Dive Brief:

    • Hampshire College faces persistent operating pressures and potential closure risk if it can’t refinance its debt, according to the private Massachusetts institution’s latest audit. 
    • Hampshire breached the terms on a group of bonds last June, which could trigger a default, according to the college’s latest audit. Moreover, the college has been negotiating with a bondholder wishing to exercise an option on a separate bond group that would force Hampshire to pay the securities immediately.
    • Lenders have extended a refinancing deadline until September as the college looks to “demonstrate the successful implementation of its strategic plan to potential investors,” said the audit for the year ending June 30.

    Dive Insight:

    Not long ago, Hampshire College was the poster child for a successful higher education turnaround, raising tens of millions of dollars in donations and adding hundreds of students to its student body after a close brush with closure in 2019. But as its fiscal 2025 audit shows, the institution is once again under heavy financial stress. 

    In addition to talks with bondholders, auditors cited recurring decreases in net assets and negative cash flow from the college’s operations. Given those woes, auditors once again added in the college’s financial statement “going concern” language, accounting terminology that signals an entity might not be financially able to continue operating beyond a year. Hampshire’s audits for fiscal years 2023 and 2024 included similar warnings. 

    Hampshire’s fiscal 2025 year ended in June with a 13.9% drop in total net assets, to $37.9 million, and an operating deficit of $3.7 million. 

    The college’s total debt stood at $24.9 million at the end of the fiscal year. More than $20 million of that moved from long-term debt to short term after Hampshire breached bond covenants in 2025 and years prior.

    Since 2022, one of the college’s bondholders has been trying to exercise a put option, which gives the holder the ability to sell back the bond to the issuer at a given price. As of late November, Hampshire hadn’t come up with a way to refund or refinance the bonds. “Both lenders have extended the tender dates to September 2026,” according to the audit.

    According to the institution’s audit, “The College has stated that its ability to continue as a going concern is contingent on securing financing for these bonds.” Along with refinancing, however, officials are also exploring ways to boost enrollment, reduce expenses and potentially sell real estate.

    The college has faced the threat of closure before. In fall 2019, Hampshire opted to admit only a partial incoming class as it navigated deep financial distress. 

    By June 2020, the college had racked up a total operating deficit of $7.1 million, more than double from the year before. But a curriculum revamp and fundraising blitz helped bring the college back from the brink of closure.

    Yet pressures remained. The college has continued to operate in the red while trying to chip away at its deficit. In 2024, the college cut 9% of its staff after lower-than-expected enrollment and as it continued working toward a balanced budget.  

    “We’re still growing, enrollment is still increasing,” then-President Edward Wingenbach told Higher Ed Dive at the time. “This is really more about ensuring that we can continue to be successful as the parameters of that growth change.” 

    Wingenbach left the college last January, as the college touted steep long-term rises in both applications and enrollment, which reached 844 by fall 2024 — up nearly 70% from two years earlier. Jennifer Chrisler, previously Hampshire’s chief advancement officer, replaced him as permanent president in October after stepping in as interim. 

    Hampshire’s enrollment ambitions hit another major speed bump last fall, when its new student enrollment of roughly 150 students missed the college’s goals — by half, MassLive.com reported last week.

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  • 2025 Was a Bad Year for College Presidents. Will 2026 Be Better?

    2025 Was a Bad Year for College Presidents. Will 2026 Be Better?

    Last year turned out to be a tumultuous one for higher education, with institutions buffeted by the Trump administration’s sweeping federal research cuts, unprecedented intrusion into classrooms and relentless crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and speech rights.

    In response, campus leaders engaged with lawmakers behind closed doors, spent heavily on lobbying and co-signed higher education associations’ efforts to fight government policies that threatened academic freedom and their institutional missions. But few objected publicly. For the most part, college presidents watched in silence.

    Experts say that’s not surprising; university leaders are caught in a unique moment—squeezed between faculty and students demanding action and boards and lawmakers intent on punishing those who speak up.

    “Unique challenges facing presidents included that difficult balance between what campus constituents wanted for presidents to say and the desires of trustees to hold very different positions, either based on pressures from legislatures or their own political beliefs,” said Teresa Valerio Parrot, principal of TVP Communications, a sector-focused public relations firm. “Often presidents found themselves in this very interesting position of trying to please internal audiences and also meet the expectations of their bosses when they weren’t congruent.”

    Here’s a look at how college presidents navigated 2025—and what observers expect this year to look like for them.

    Caught Unprepared

    Experts said most presidents were caught off guard by the onslaught of challenges unleashed by the federal government.

    Brian Rosenberg, president emeritus of Macalester College and a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told Inside Higher Ed that last year was “traumatizing” for campus leaders who struggled “to not get snowed under by all of the challenges they faced.”

    Michael Harris, a professor of higher education at Southern Methodist University, argued that presidents had a “failure of imagination” over realizing “how damaging” policy changes would be under Trump 2.0 as the federal government shifted from a trusted partner to attack mode.

    “Institutions were still trying to figure out how to navigate all the typical challenges that higher education had been facing before 2025. Those didn’t go away, but then you add on to it the federal landscape changing virtually overnight and continually changing,” Harris said. “When you’re trying to make decisions by which judge has frozen which policy or what might be coming out next, or a Dear Colleague letter that doesn’t match what the logical legal interpretation would be, that’s a challenging environment for anybody, much less a college president.”

    At the same time, many leaders were also navigating financial woes, an upended athletics landscape and protests against ICE raids and international student visa crackdowns.

    Lost Jobs, Stymied Searches

    Institutions and individual presidents alike were caught in the political crosshairs in 2025, leading to a litany of federal and state investigations, resignations and the occasional legal showdown.

    Multiple presidents targeted by federal or state lawmakers stepped down in 2025, including Michael Schill at Northwestern University and Jim Ryan at the University of Virginia. Both had drawn scrutiny from the federal government: Schill for his handling of pro-Palestinian protests and Ryan for allegedly failing to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs fast enough. Others, like Mark Welsh at Texas A&M University, were pushed out by pressure from state politicians.

    Welsh was caught in a flap between Melissa McCoul, an English instructor, and a student in her children’s literature class who objected to the professor’s statement that there are more than two genders, citing an executive order from President Trump that recognizes gender only as male and female. Welsh initially resisted firing McCoul until the student tagged a Republican lawmaker, who published a video of the incident, ratcheting up pressure on both Welsh and McCoul. Ultimately, Welsh fired McCoul as the controversy swirled and other Texas politicians piled on.

    Although Welsh gave state lawmakers what they wanted, it was too late to save his job.

    He resigned under pressure and was replaced by interim president Tommy Williams, a former Republican lawmaker. In his first few months on the job, Williams sparked controversy after Texas A&M censored a philosophy course; officials told the professor he could not teach Plato in a class on contemporary moral problems because it conflicted with university restrictions on topics of race, gender and sexuality. (Williams has since noted the university is not “banning Plato altogether.”)

    More recently, Texas A&M canceled a graduate ethics class after a professor said it would be impossible to specify the precise timing or manner in which topics of race, gender and sexuality would arise.

    Texas A&M did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

    Judith Wilde, a research professor at George Mason University who studies presidential searches and contracts, wrote by email that 2025 had “unusually high” turnover both at the presidential level and among other high-ranking academic leaders. She noted that amid the current political volatility, “some institutions seem to be using an interim leader to buy time as they consider their political exposure as well as try to avoid committing to a long-term hire.”

    Similarly, Rosenberg pointed to the mid-2024 elevation of Harvard University president Alan Garber from interim to permanent status as an example of a college making a relatively safe choice and sidestepping the internal and external criticism that would inevitably accompany an executive hire. He also noted that Columbia University recently extended its presidential search.

    “Nobody wants to do a search right now, particularly at these elite privates, because of the kind of scrutiny it will draw and the difficulty of hiring the right kind of person,” Rosenberg said.

    Who Gets to Be a President?

    Last year also saw significant presidential hiring drama, such as when the Florida Board of Governors rejected Santa Ono as the next president of the University of Florida, even though the institution’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously to select him as their next leader. The FLBOG largely shot down Ono’s selection over concerns about his past support of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, which he unsuccessfully sought to downplay.

    Wilde said that reflects a shift not only in who is being hired but also in the fact that “the search itself is no longer the deciding factor in choosing a president” as boards lean into performative public vetting. Now “whether the president can survive the ideological gauntlet” is what matters most in hiring, she said.

    She suspects such factors may prevent traditional academics from applying for presidencies.

    At UVA, the Board of Visitors tapped an internal candidate, business dean Scott Beardsley, who reportedly scrubbed multiple references to DEI initiatives from his résumé during the search process. (Critics have also accused Beardsley of inflating his academic profile and research output.)

    Experts say such instances reflect both sector hiring challenges and the changing nature of the presidency.

    “When you have a rash of poor hires, failed searches, failed presidencies, at some point we have to acknowledge that’s not individual failures, it’s systemic failure,” Harris said. “I think we need to acknowledge we have systemic failures in how we hire, recruit, retain, reward and support presidents. Also, the job is changing, insofar as presidents have to be more politically savvy. It’s always been a part of the job, but I feel like now that is even more so the case.”

    Rosenberg agreed that a president’s political affiliation matters more than ever, especially in red states like Florida and Texas, which have hired numerous former lawmakers to lead higher ed institutions.

    “It’s never been irrelevant, certainly at public institutions, but in places like Florida and in Texas, we’re basically seeing college presidents being chosen from current or former politicians. So political affiliation is important in public institutions in ways that it has never been before,” Rosenberg said.

    The Year Ahead

    Experts project another challenging year for college presidents owing to a difficult policy environment. But they also note a few points of optimism that presidents can build on in 2026.

    Valerio Parrot said that one win from 2025 was that “presidents were able to find coalitions” and to network with other leaders in similar positions, using one another as sounding boards. Such relationships, she said, helped guide them through moments of political uncertainty. Valerio Parrot also pointed to the role higher ed associations played in pushing back on federal overreach.

    Rosenberg noted Harvard’s legal victory against the Trump administration after it tried to strip the university of federal research funding, among other actions.

    He wants to see more college presidents take a stand and exhibit moral courage.

    “I think what they could learn is that not resisting authoritarian growth doesn’t stop it. It enables it,” he said. “You would have thought that people would have learned that from history, but apparently we have not. If you allow authoritarians to continue to expand their power without pushback, they will expand that even more. You do that long enough, and sooner or later you reach a point where you can’t push back. I think the lesson is that duck and cover isn’t working.”

    Valerio Parrot urged presidents to ask themselves three questions when considering whether to issue statements: “Why them? Why now? And what is the takeaway from what they’re sharing?” If presidents choose to speak up, she argued, they need to do so in a way that does more than add noise.

    While speaking up is perilous, Harris argued it’s the kind of decision presidents must weigh and strike the right balance in execution.

    “This is where I think presidents are in a no-win situation. If they spoke out as forcefully as their faculty wanted, they would be in an untenable position,” he said. “At the same time, if you’re not willing to advocate for the core values of your institution, then what are you doing at the top?”

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